A Jaded Life

Following the five guys was unexpectedly amusing. Well, once I managed to make the construct look and behave as a bird would, drawing on memories originally shared with me by Lenore, the entire thing became amusing. Luckily, it only took me a few hours of concentrated work to get from a somewhat static construct that only moved because it was purely magical and directed by my magic as my frozen Shuttles would be to a fluidly moving construct that would pass muster, at least at a distance. Once that was achieved, my surveillance shifted from the long-distance observation I had used at first, with the construct high enough in the sky to make it difficult to recognise its unnatural behaviour to something a lot more up-close and intimate.

Doing so came with the added benefit that I could use a bit of Wind Magic, especially the sound concept, to let me listen to these people, though their conversation wasn’t too interesting if they talked at all. Most of the time, they simply wandered quietly through the valley, exchanging only the bare minimum needed to coordinate, but maybe that was to be expected. Unless one of my daughters was receiving a lesson from me, my own group moved in silence, too, focus directed at our environment, making sure that we weren’t running into something nasty.

For these people, it had to be even worse. From what I could tell, they didn’t have anyone fully focused on Intuition, meaning they had nobody with truly superhuman senses, nothing like my own greatly enhanced senses or Silva’s canine nose and ears, all of which were incredibly good at detecting hazards and enemies long before they became dangerous to us. No, these people could only be vigilant and hope that their reactions were swift enough to protect them, once they stumbled into a dangerous area. A part of me was reminded of an old joke about traps that were either found with perception or with your health bar.

These people were an example of finding traps with their health bar, though I had a feeling that one of the archers was working on becoming more inclined towards the tracking and detection track. Still, he hadn’t managed to get very far on it. He was intuitive enough to notice that my construct was following them, though he failed to realise just what was strange about it and made the fairly grave error of demonstrating hostility towards something he didn’t understand. If the construct wasn’t one but an actual creature of Wind and Darkness, his actions might have spelled serious for their group but as I was intelligent enough to know holding a grudge wouldn’t serve me well, he was lucky. Or maybe not, as his actions and fundamentally aggressive behaviour had put him on my list.

The entertainment factor that came from the observation of these people shot up even further when a few of the local crows and ravens decided my construct was one of them on the third day of my watch. From then on, it wasn’t just one feathered shape following the group of five, the local birds gathered around and followed. Where before, one bird had followed them, now, there was an entire unkindness of ravens alongside a murder of crows, some twenty, maybe thirty birds total. The entire feathered mob was either sitting on the rocks and cliffs to watch them, resting on trees or simply gliding above them in the wind, observing and, at times, showing their amusement with loud, mocking caws.

Even for me, who was inhabiting a shell quite similar to theirs, it was a little spooky, though I readily joined in on the cawing laughter, letting my own amusement bleed into the construct. That part of the experience was quite fascinating. The construct was, obviously, based on Lenore, as had those we used back on Mundus, but now, I wasn’t just driving it, I had let myself fall completely into the construct and was living it, leaning on the memories Lenore had shared with me.

Amusingly, channelling those memories and letting myself be the raven caused some complications when it was time to stop for the day, especially when it came to walking and moving in general. The bird was flapping its wings and hopping but trying to stand up from my throne by waving my arms and hopping from my ankles turned out to be… problematic.

Luckily, I had been wearing my cloak, allowing me to reflexively channel some magic to turn an incredibly awkward and likely painful fall into a strange glide and land on my feet, without bruising anything but my dignity. A few stretches and deliberate movement helped to get my mind accustomed to my body, so it wasn’t a real problem, just an annoyance, especially as we had to travel most of the night, catching up to the people we were pursuing and using the rest of the night to train.

That training also took a slightly different tone after the local birds started to view the construct as one of their own, especially when they showed that they were far, far more intelligent than one would think. They not only noticed that the construct wasn’t just a raven, they also realised that the construct and I were one and the same. After we left our cave during the evening, one of the ravens I had seen during the day from my construct approached the five of us and began to guide us.

Luckily, I had seen and experienced more than enough corvid body language to understand it and realise that it wanted us to follow and was promising something useful in exchange.

When we did, it turned out that the raven was guiding us to eliminate dangerous predators, especially giant owls and other raptors. Afterwards, the raven consistently guided us towards useful resources, mostly things that ravens couldn’t fully exploit. Places where Alex managed to collect some interesting rocks or gems, a few small deposits of ore, sulfur, salt, and things like that. All in all, it was an incredibly beneficial relationship between the local ravens and us, especially as it allowed us to make use of the nights, without losing the group we were following. What made the whole thing even better was that the ravens seemed to actively discourage the group of five from finding the deposits the ravens used to pay us, without those five ever noticing it. The realisation only drove home just how clever these birds were and I made a mental note to keep amicable relations with them, or we might find ourselves with bigger troubles than one would think. They would undoubtedly find a way to pay us back, likely when we least expected it.

All in all, we spent a week following the five people through the mountains, moving in a fairly large circle until they returned to their community. Without following them, finding the place would have been fairly difficult, whoever had decided on the place had been quite cognisant of natural defences and used them to the fullest. The village was set in a natural bowl with a single entrance carved by a small brook coming down from the hills above, making detection difficult. Furthermore, it was quite clear that the place had been built after the change, from recently harvested timber, roughly hewn rocks, clay and similar crude materials.

Why they had chosen to forgo the remnants of the old civilisation, I wasn’t sure but even while observing from my construct, I could see that it had done them a lot of good. Maybe it was due to the complete and deliberate disconnect, maybe it was due to the local leadership, but the people acted a lot more like the locals I had seen and met on Mundus than the people I had seen here since the change.

This community had accepted that the world was changed and simply moved within the changed world, without trying to bring back what was gone. It was, quite frankly, impressive and, in a way, it reminded me of my own actions, courageously moving forward without looking back, or something like that. Amongst all the communities I had seen so far, these people had the best chance to withstand the dangers of this new world and from the fairly expansive and flourishing fields I could see, they didn’t appear to have trouble feeding their people, either. The only fly in the ointment, so to speak, was the visible temple, right in the middle of the bustling and growing village. I couldn’t readily identify which gods it was dedicated to, but even from a distance and through the construct, I could feel a faint, divine presence.

Now, I only needed to figure out how to get these people to trade with me, or, if the possibility of trading with them didn’t work, how I could steal from them what we needed, as unpalatable as that was.